Welp. This is a new one. A Chicago man was arrested this month after witnesses spotted him stuffing his three-year old son into the trunk of his car. “You are being bad and I’m going to punish you by putting you in the trunk,” Matlak screamed at his child after putting him in the trunk, onlookers told police. The temperature outside was 89 degrees at the time, according to a Norridge Police Department report. HOWEVER, the man, Boguslaw Matlak, and his wife, Laura Quijano told authorities that they were not actually punishing their child. Instead, were trying to gauge and understand public reaction to child endangerment when they turned on a hidden camera themselves and filmed Matlak placing their infant in the trunk of their vehicle. They say it was was parked in public view (outside of a restaurant in Norridge, a suburb of Chicago) for this specific reason. “I was thinking maybe I should do a video to show people that they should do something about it when they see something wrong, to get involved,” Matlak told NBC Chicago of the September 2 incident. He was simply conducting a social media experience, Matlak argues. Three people were sitting near where Matlak’s Audi was – parked outside of a Panera Bread – and told the responding officer that after shutting the trunk, Matlak quickly got into the car and sped away. Matlak said at the time to the cop that he was hioping to become an “Internet sensation.” He said he had done the same trunk prank with his child twice before, yet no one had reacted. The officer listened to Matlak’s excuse and went to check on the three-year old, who was found safe and sound with his mother. Quijano told the officer that the back seat in the car had actually been folded down … that she had been inside at the time… and that she grabbed her son right away and pulled him into the seat alongside her. Matlak was arrested and charged with endangering the life of a child. The toddler was sent by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to live with a relative for more than three weeks, but was then returned to his parents on Wednesday. “We’re still investigating,” a department spokesman has told NBC News. Rina Infelise, Quijano’s lawyer, told NBC that her client and her husband have always been consistent, saying: “From what I know the story has always been the same – it was a social experiment… “There were five cameras used. It was pretty planned out.” And pretty darn stupid.
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Dad Arrested For Stuffing 3-year-old in Trunk as "Social Media Experiment"
